As a tool for improving a passenger's walking between stairs or shortening a passenger's walking distance, the passenger transportation apparatus is very common in daily life. As an example, escalators usually used between stairs of commercial buildings and moving sidewalks usually used in large-scale airports are especially common.
For such devices, besides the considerations from the perspective of performance, the convenience of installation of the devices should also be emphatically considered in the structural design thereof. For example, for the passenger transportation apparatus, the components, such as the motor and the gear box, of the drive system thereof can generally be fixed onto the truss; furthermore, installation between the main drive shaft and the stair of the escalator and between the main drive shaft and the hand strap should also be completed. In this process, restricted by practical installation environments, the positions of several components therein need to be adjusted. If the above-mentioned arrangement is continued, in adjustment, if the motor needs to be moved, the truss should be moved as a whole; and if the main drive shaft needs to be moved, the components, such as the stair or the hand strap, should also be adjusted synchronously. As a result, the installation of the passenger transportation apparatus wastes time and energy very much.
Moreover, the stability and reliability of the passenger transportation apparatus are also very important. In order to keep the steadiness of transportation, requirements for the drive system of the passenger transportation apparatus are more restricted. A turbine mechanism and a chain drive are mainly used in the drive system for a conventional passenger transportation apparatus. In such an arrangement, oil should be frequently added for lubrication, which on one hand may lead to the problem of lubricating oil leakage, and on the other hand needs to stop the operation of the equipment frequently, having the problem of consuming manpower for warranty and maintenance. The other kind of drive system for a passenger transportation apparatus utilizing gear drive can well overcome the above-mentioned problem, nevertheless, the drive mechanism in which multiple sets of gears are used for transmission may have larger radial vibration, which may lead to the drive system being unstable, thereby affecting the torque output.